I had to work yesterday when Vancouver got hit with the annual ONE Day of snow. I enviously watched my Facebook feed of family and friends playing in their backyards building snowmen and plopping into the snow to make snow angels.

As usual today the temperature is warmer and the snow is slushy. On the way to give Auntie Robin her gift Little A picked up some snow and threw a snowball at me and started laughing her little head off. OH GAME ON! I picked up a bit of snow – hey good packing snow.

We were going to make a snowman, not just any snowman – a rainbow snowman. We built a snowman, went hunting for rocks and branches, grabbed a carrot and some cranberries – for the nose and eyes of course.

Then I grabbed her paint and it was time to make this snowman the coolest dude on the block. Little A was so engrossed in painting her snowman. She made buttons, pants, painted a smile, added hair and cheeks.

There are two things Little A loves right now: using a spray bottle and coins. I thought I’d switch up the window cleaning she usually asks to do and use this time to learn about money. My low windows were cleaned the other night so we were good in that department.

I also like to find activities that don’t take any artistic “talent” from me because its too much pressure for me. I am craft-phobic.

But lets go back to Little A’s money cleaning. She is learning what coins look like… what is a toonie, a loonie, a quarter, a dime, a nickel and a penny.

I emptied some change onto her table and Little A got to choose which one she wanted to “clean” first.

Loose Change to choose from

I let Little A figure out how she wanted to play this game. I think it is important to let her create her own play, I want to encourage her to think/create on her own. Oh who am I kidding -I had no real idea how how I was going to have this time play out. So I told her to clean one at a time so we could talk about it. How she cleaned it was up to her.

She started with a wipe and laid it out on the table, then squirted the heck out of it.

Spraying the wipe getting it good and wet

Next she picked out a coin and laid it on the wipe then folded the wipe over and over in a precise manner, well as precise as a two year old can. She obviously had a plan, glad someone did.

Folding the wipe over the money to clean it

The next step was letting her clean it however she wanted. Happy as a bee!

washing the coin clean

After that we looked at the money and what each side was so she’d recall what a ship was or what a beaver, or loon etc. Little A enjoyed when she got the coins correct.

looking at the money to figure out what each one is

It was an easy little lesson on money without feeling like I was a tiger mom and pushing learning on her. Maybe she’ll take an interest in coins and be able to hang out with her djudgi (my dad) as he’s a collector.

tired of trying to find what food to make your toddler? The bigger question, will they eat it? This is a blog about food I make for Alice, and the successes and failures of what's on the menu at our house.